Ok PPKers, I need some help here. (mods: not sure if this is the right section for this so feel free to move if necessary. thx) So, I run a vegan market stall in the summers, but work is very scarce until that starts...as in like..i made 12 euro last week, total. from babysitting. which obviously doesnt cover my rent, or my market kitchen rent, not to mention food...and gas...and school loans that need to be paid off eventually. I've tried selling my baking etc to shops but theres just not enough population here to move the stuff; we are mostly a tourist area and until the tourists come... yeah. plus the shops take a huge cut and wont buy outright so you only get paid if stuff sells. so basically you go back to pick up stale cookies or old tabbouleh to feed to the birds. So, baking not really an option at the moment, until the season starts up.

Anyhow, I've pretty much exhausted all other options here for the time being. There is just NOTHING around. I do bits of gross housecleaning and stuff when its available but its just not, really.

For various reasons, I really need an online job, even if its only bringing in a bit of money. I need there to be money going into my American bank account (I live in Ireland), even if its just a slowish-trickle would be better than nothing. BUT, I seem to have no skills ahahaha. I cannot do computer tech work or anything. Ive been scrounging the net on and of for a couple years, hoping i could find an online teaching job or something...but, my graduate degrees are in Catholic Theology, and thats not exactly in high demand, particularly for online courses. My undergrad was in anthropology, but places seem to require you to have a Masters in order to teach online courses in whatever subject, so, the anthro degree doesnt really help. Im a pretty fast typist, so i tried to get an online transcription job a few years back, and supposedly made it into a "training program" for one of the online companies, but the recordings were poorly done and hard to understand, and suddenly they were like oppp sorry out of the training program buh bye. I feel like I could do something like captioning for movies or TV shows pretty well, as ive sometimes seen AWFUL captioning for movies and been like maaan i could do better than that. but i never found any way to get started in that.

I'm supposed to be writing a doctoral thesis (related to veganism) at the same time, so I dont really have the time or energy to spend hours and hours setting up my own online business, websites, etc or my own thing; i really need something that will be work i can do that will just pay me. But i also dont want to make like 10 cents an hour or a dollar an hour, which is what it seems to be on some of those websites that offer once-off jobs and surveys and stuff. I feel like ive trolled those for a while too, and, nothing. im hoping im missing some possibility out there...

any suggestions? I know im not giving y'all much to work with here... I feel like Ive been in school my whole life, combined with doing out-doorsy things, and i never developed skill in computers, web design, or any of that stuff that would be oh so useful now. Nor did i study a trade. I wish i was a car mechanic or a plumber cos those are like the only people around here who actually have work right now ;p

I fooled around with it a few years ago very minimally and made maybe 20 or 30 bucks, it's kind of time-consuming work and you have to dodge a lot of spam, but it seemed like there was legit stuff back then. I have no idea if it's still viable but you could check it out.

_________________"If I were M. de la Viandeviande, I would now write a thirteen page post about how you have to have free will to be vegan, but modern science does not suggest any evidence for free will, therefore it is impossible to be vegan." -mumbles

I fooled around with it a few years ago very minimally and made maybe 20 or 30 bucks, it's kind of time-consuming work and you have to dodge a lot of spam, but it seemed like there was legit stuff back then. I have no idea if it's still viable but you could check it out.

It's still viable (ish?). I know a number of people who do social science researchy things with it.

I'm not sure about the freelance writing because I wouldnt know where to start. with either finding the jobs OR doing the writing! Ive never written for anything before, only five billion papers for school... I kind of feel intimidated when i dont have any experience with something :/ Open to advice on how to get started in that if anyone has any though!

Proofreading i can definitely do (despite the sloppy punctuation appearance of my posts, and lack of proper caps, lol. i just get lazy when im typing my own stuff). I tend to notice (and get annoyed) at typos in books when im doing research, so, yeah, that might be down my alley. I'll check out mechanical turk too...i think i checked it out before though a few months back and it seemed like alot of stuff you had to wade through to find any good stuff, and with a lot of competition... Anyone have further advice on finding proofing work? I dont have any official experience at it but I have been writing papers through 10 years of grad school.... its the getting your foot in the door part that seems to be the hard part to me. I found one on craigslist but then you have to have InDesign Software, which costs...699 euro to purchase from adobe...

i am reviving this thread because i keep getting people telling me about Odesk, how wonderful it is.

I made an account and just get all sorts of spam and people asking me if i would translate for $3/hour. I get $50, so I am not sure what the great advantage is. $3 an hour is really, really sad. I took a whole bunch of time-consuming tests to set up the damn account, and i think it's a scam. [a friend does a lot of translated work and says it's mostly handwritten things that she translates. i'm used to doing academic journal translation, so i think i will keep my snobbish work]. Now i'm hearing about Elance. I took a look and the projects i was looking at were all in Nigeria. I mean, poor Nigeria, I'm sure there are legitimate businesses there, but i'm not super confident about that.

Any comments on these or other sites for translation/editing/proofing? [i'm already on Proz, which gets me some stuff and admittedly i haven't really pursued online work. the chinese agencies are the big hirers and they're really tough to work for]

it seems like these days there is basically no easy work available.. could you maybe look for a supermarket job or a café job? i mean, even if you're writing a big paper, it still would be possible to work 10-15 hours a week, right? and maybe be super proactive about getting more cleaning work and babysitting work - print out a bunch of flyers with your phone # and write something about you being a super great and flexible cleaning lady/babysitter.. maybe that would bring some work along?

in my experience, baking businesses are super hard work to make work (just like any food business), and even if you work 60+ hours a week it's still pretty hard to make decent money..

i am reviving this thread because i keep getting people telling me about Odesk, how wonderful it is.

I made an account and just get all sorts of spam and people asking me if i would translate for $3/hour. I get $50, so I am not sure what the great advantage is. $3 an hour is really, really sad. I took a whole bunch of time-consuming tests to set up the damn account, and i think it's a scam. [a friend does a lot of translated work and says it's mostly handwritten things that she translates. i'm used to doing academic journal translation, so i think i will keep my snobbish work]. Now i'm hearing about Elance. I took a look and the projects i was looking at were all in Nigeria. I mean, poor Nigeria, I'm sure there are legitimate businesses there, but i'm not super confident about that.

Any comments on these or other sites for translation/editing/proofing? [i'm already on Proz, which gets me some stuff and admittedly i haven't really pursued online work. the chinese agencies are the big hirers and they're really tough to work for]

I don't have any job leads unfortunately, I just wanted to sympathize because those websites did not work out for me either.

I've been browsing the forums at wahm.com (work at home mom) and trying to get ideas. I feel a little funny being there since I don't have kids ; ) But it can be a good resource for finding work online.

When I was between jobs I had some stuff through Elance, but most people on there do NOT want to pay people an appropriate wage. There was some super sketchy stuff, as well as students looking for someone to write their school paper for them, but I did manage to find some legitimate work. It just didn't pay very well.

_________________I like my bagels like I like my men - big and covered with earth balance & nooch. - Bunniee

I've taken two jobs on elance from the same person and spent about an hour writing each thing and got $20 a piece, so that's not bad. But a ton of people want to pay ridiculously small amounts. One website wanted to pay me $12 for 1500 word articles (I get 50-75 for the website I write for the most) which didn't seem worth it at all to me, and there are people wanting to pay way way less.

_________________"No one with hair so soft and glossy could ever be bad at anything." - Tofulish